Instagram Growth for Podcasters with Jasmine Star
Ready to up your Insta game? Jasmine Star, host of The Jasmine Star Show, teaches us how. Photos on this page courtesy of Jasmine.
Podcasters have enough on their plate without having to worry about what to post on Instagram every day. Thankfully, fellow podcaster Jasmine Star has a social media strategy to make life easy for us.
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On Podcasting Step by Step, Jasmine and I talked about many ways your podcast can grow your business, and she also shared how Instagram can grow both your podcast and your business.
In addition to being an Instagram all-star, Jasmine is the founder of Social Curator, a membership that helps small business owners succeed on social (I’m a member).
Jasmine’s fool-proof Instagram posting strategy
In Social Curator, Jasmine teaches you to choose nine to 12 photo topics that will attract your ideal customer. You should choose the same amount of caption categories, which are theme days that help you talk about your business without selling to people all the time.
Photo topics
“Photo topics are things that you want to show that represent visual pieces of your business,” Jasmine says. “One of my photo topics is coffee. Like, I don't make coffee. I don't sell coffee. I don't roast beans, but I incorporate coffee. I incorporate books I'm reading. I incorporate my family to show visually what I do and who I am now.” (Listen to the podcast to hear an example of how Jasmine can use an image of coffee to talk about her business).
Caption categories
“Categories empower you to talk about your business without having to sell your business,” Jasmine says. “The way that you sell is to give value and benefits. And you do this by way of categories, talking about your business without having to sell your business, keeping that conversation going until you're ready to fully commit and ask for the sale.”
Every month, Social Curators get photos and captions they can use as inspiration for their social media posting. As mentioned above, you should come up with some of your own caption categories, and Jasmine will give you an additional seven. “These are categories that have been proven statistically to perform extraordinarily well on social media, things like:
‘behind the scenes’
‘the benefit of your product or service’
‘your why’
Because as Simon's Sinek says, ‘people don't buy what you sell. They buy why you sell it.’”
Learn more about how Jasmine plans her Instagram.
Know, like, trust
“There's a good chance that if somebody is looking for a podcasting course, they're going to find a podcasting course, but where do they want to spend their money?” Jasmine says, using my services as an example. “They want to spend their money with, number one, somebody they trust, and, number two, somebody they know. And oftentimes this is the missing link with so many business owners is that they're afraid to show who they are and what they do.”
“And as a result, they just default. ‘I'm just going to sell some more.’ So when you have your caption categories and you're empowered to talk about your business without selling your business, you can then mix and match with your photo topics.”
Instagram SEO
Did you know that your Instagram name and handle are searchable? Yup. What keywords can you add to help your ideal podcaster listener / customer find you? And when they get there, is it clear in your bio who you are and who you help? Why would your bio appeal to someone enough to follow?
The social posting company Later has a very in-depth article on increasing your discoverability on Instagram.
Putting it all together
OK, so you’ve written down your photo topics and caption categories. Now it’s time to start batching posts. It might help you to assign a category to a specific day of the week like we talked about on the Social Media for Podcasters episode with Andrea Jones.
Keep yourself organized in a spreadsheet, or use a social media scheduler like Smarterqueue (affiliate link) to plan your posts. Block an hour a week to write your posts and choose your photos.
Most of your time on social should be social, rather than just posting. So have fun and engage with others, specifically others who would be interested in your podcast / business. And if you slide into the DMs, Jasmine says to treat it like a cocktail party. You’re getting to know someone, not telling them to buy your stuff.